Today in pork demon news:
It's a delicate balancing act, promoting a book with six kids at home full-time. My book Stolen Youth—about how I believe woke ideology is upending American childhood—was released a week ago. To give me the time and space I needed to do various television shows and appearances, I arranged childcare for three of my kids.
On Tuesday, March 14, my husband was working from home while my 7-year-old and 9-year-old children worked through their homeschool checklists. I put my newborn down for a nap while I logged on for an appearance on The Hill's YouTube show, Rising.
Right before we went on air, I heard one of the hosts speaking about parents in what I perceived to be a negative way. I panicked. Over my career as a loud and proud "breeder", I have often felt attacked by the left, and braced myself to be ambushed on air about my own life choices as a mother of six children.
Throughout the entire interview I felt a panic attack growing, but just tried to get through the duration of the appearance without an incident. As we talked, I was stammering and trying not to set traps for myself. I did not want to open up questions about my own personal life.
Finally, I was left speechless at one question—the basic definition of the word "woke."
It was a fair question; after all, it's the centerpiece of my book's premise. But by that point, the panic attack had arrived and I was rendered speechless. Eventually, I sputtered out what I thought was a decent definition of the word, but by then it was too late.
I knew the momentary brain freeze would go viral, and I was right. The clip has been viewed millions of times, and a dozen articles have been written about the most humiliating seconds of my life.
As soon as we hung up, I broke into a sob. My husband and kids immediately surrounded me. I'm not usually a crier. In fact, the last time I got a bit tearful was two months ago towards the end of my home birth, during the worst stage of labor called transition.
Watching me cry and panic was not a sight my kids were used to seeing, yet for the next day, they saw it a few more times. For the next day, I visibly struggled emotionally. But I also kept plugging on with more appearances on radio and podcasts, albeit without the confidence I normally exhibit and enjoy.
Though I've become more self-conscious of my pauses, I haven't stopped working to promote a book I spent a year and a half researching, writing, and editing. I'm proud of that work and our final product, and won't let a short period of anxiety detract from it or define it, or me.
My kids are all home with me on a regular basis and have had a front row seat for this show, my lowest and most frustrating professional experience to date. But I'm glad they were.
On Wednesday morning, as the clip was going increasingly viral, I felt compelled to sit my older kids down and be honest with them. I told them I was on edge, and that daddy was working from home in order to help me juggle, but also to be emotionally supportive.
I told them a lot of people were sending me unkind messages and comments, and that I would do my best to not let my feelings affect my mood, but that it might, and if it did, that I'm sorry. Saying this out loud made me more conscious of trying to keep that promise.
I wouldn't have planned this experience, but it was a valuable one for my older children. They saw their mother fail, and they saw her get back on the horse. They saw their mother humiliated, but they also saw my confidence in myself remain intact.
They are also watching me try to win back my confidence on camera, working hard not to let one moment give me permanent stage fright. They saw what an emotionally healthy marriage is: My husband silently taking on the tasks that I usually do to give me a break. They saw him give me pep talks and hugs when I needed them, and they saw him joke with me as I moved on enough to be able to laugh at my own misfortune.
We homeschool our kids, and a lot of the time that looks like math or phonics lessons. But sometimes it looks like this; real life lessons in resilience, humility, and perseverance.
Bethany Mandel is a columnist, political commentator and co-author of Stolen Youth: How Radicals Are Erasing Innocence and Indoctrinating a Generation. You can follow her on Twitter at @bethanyshondark.
Homeschooling is child abuse
I mean, so is public/private school under capitalism. But homeschooling is even worse.
Sorry, I didn't consider that.
I think we can do better for autistic people than segregating them to homeschool. It just fucking sucks that the only choices for neurodivergent seem to be either "Isolate yourself" or "Have trauma from how fucked up school social life is."
Hey, it me. I have a lifetime of trauma behind me because of being relentlessly bullied throughout school, because autism literally wasn't a recognized disorder when I was born.
I'm more thinking about the socially / mentally handicapped kids who are simply locked in their rooms by negligent parents lacking the time or skill to provide a formal education.
It's the pulling a bandaid off quickly or slowly of child abuse. Sucks wither way, but better they get that trauma handled early cause it's not gonna be easier later.
It's also fucking up their education for life. Most parents have not been taught how to teach, they have zero meaningful oversight, are underqualified in the subjects they are teaching etc.
Basically, every problem normal schools have (other than the social aspects) but magnified
And that's even a best case scenario where they aren't teaching their kids wrong stuff because schools wouldn't teach wrong stuff.
I don't have any background in curriculum but I'm confident that I could teach most subjects up to a high school level.
Do I desire to do it all? Hell no. Sign me up for a collective schooling project where I teach 1 or 2 subjects for 15 hours a week, and have at least a dozen other communards who do the same.
Use a cotton swab with some rubbing alcohol to remove bandaids painlessly :the-more-you-know:
"I wasn't unable to explain the core concept I'm against, I had a panic attack because I heard someone say something mean about parents and it reduced me to a gibbering mess."
Fucking lmao, this loser spent 18 months writing and researching about "wokeism"
If I wanted to try my hand at right wing grifting, $5 says I could crank out something twice as good in half the time.
I've been feeling the same with their comedy. I could do way funnier reactionary jokes.
and then some leftists try it, discover that they can make a killing grifting the right and disappear from the left.
800 words but still can't define what "woke ideology" is lmao
Aw, smol bean fascist had her anxiety triggered because she thinks she might have possibly heard someone say something that she could maybe interpret as negative toward parenthood. The rising panic attack made her just totally forget the foundational premise of a book she "researched" for 18 months. I'm sure her drivel isn't contributing to an atmosphere of anxiety at all, btw. Parents are the ones who are really under attack.
Fuck off. Her big moment of humiliation won't even be remembered in two weeks. There's a whole landslide of reactionary bullshit that will swallow this dumb book up. Her work is completely inconsequential.
Reactionaries are such shallow, vapid clowns.
PS. I hate the weaponized use of mental health language.
As Bethany Mandel awoke one morning from uneasy dreams, she found herself transformed in her bed into a gigantic corncob.
They saw what an emotionally healthy marriage is: My husband silently taking on the tasks that I usually do to give me a break.
Hey, that's great, but if your target audience mainly consists of "traditional family" advocates, they may not think so.
In trad family, when the husband cooks, cleans, or cares it's a temporary gift to the wife.
six kids at home full-time.
Your choice. Your responsibility. Odds are 1 or 2 are queer.
Must be why the grift game has been so strong.
wonder how her supporters are going to reconcile her life's "work" in opposing "wokeness" with this immediate capitulation into "i'm a smol bean uwu, i homeschool my kids but i'm a working mum too! my husband can stay home and become the primary caregiver while i cope with my mental health issues!"
Stolen Youth: How Radicals Are Erasing Innocence and Indoctrinating a Generation.
Big talk from someone who
is committing child abusehomeschools their six childrenSome of my earliest childhood memories involve all the adults alternating between paranoid about unspecified terrorists and sad about dead troops
I-it's hard to explain in a 15 second soundbite
Saying "wokeness means being aware of the systemic discrimination Amerikan society is built upon" really isn't that hard. Unless you define yourself as anti-woke and using the actual definition of woke means you're outing yourself as a bigoted piece of shit.
If she'd been smoother, she'd simply respond "You'll have to buy my book to find out. My definition of Wokeness is actually the best part."
Even their grift game is lacking.
